I write the big scenes first, that is, the scenes that carry the meaning of the book, the emotional experience.

I had come at last and my heart was beating again strongly to a heart that could not know despair because it forgot itself in the duty of its love.

When a woman gets the idea of justice, there's no teaching her any sense.

Old men when they begin to hear the last trumpet, on the morning breeze, often have a kind of absent-minded smile; like people listening. And their smiles are just politeness.

An old mans memories, like his bones, grow sharp with age and show their true shapes.

The will is never free - it is always attached to an object, a purpose. It is simply the engine in the car - it can't steer

Nothing like poetry when you lie awake at night. It keeps the old brain limber. It washes away the mud and sand that keeps on blocking up the bends. Like waves to make the pebbles dance on my old floors. And turn them into rubies and jacinths; or at any rate, good imitations.